Pure Gym Cancels Membership

Pure Gym announced this morning that they were scrapping plans to sell shares on the stock exchange, with the IPO abandonment due to the challenges facing newly listed companies. So ok technically they weren’t a member of the index yet but it does sound like an optimistic gym plan that didn’t get further than a full basket at Nike’s online shop and the last issue of Men’s Health magazine. But in fact the gym operator did receive strong demand for investment, but this was outweighed by the recent struggles in the European IPO market. The Group state that now the market debut doesn’t favour their long term interests.

Samsung has now confirmed the production of the new Galaxy Note 7 has stopped. Discontinuing the new model has harmed the share price and reputation of the South Korean tech giant. Following the news approximately $18bn was wiped off the value of the company, but of course there is no telling what it may cost them in the long term; both financially and reputation wise. Apple of course a likely beneficiary…..

Ted Baker, the high street fashion label has reported strong profits for the first half of 2016 despite the obvious challenging environment. Sales were up over 14% with profits jumping over 20%. Other similar retailers have struggled due to unseasonal weather and Brexit uncertainty. Luxury goods giant LVMH also reported strong Q3 results, and this in turn helped retailers on the FTSE such as NEXT, whom topped the index with shares rising 3.93%. Ted Baker shares closed 4.76% higher on the day.

The FTSE 100 itself reached its highest ever intra-trading day level at 7129.83, before cooling to the close to finish at 7070.88. The continuing struggles for the pound again enticing investors towards cheap stocks as well as driving dollar earners.

Oil did retreat from mornings highs after Igor Sechin, Russia’s most powerful oil executive announced his company, Rosneft, will not cap oil production. Putin did say on Monday that Russia was ready to join a proposed OPEC deal but that was about as much as he gave away, nobody said this would be easy.